584 Sir Walter Scott. 



of the Sabbatarian seceders from that establishment, who also gives 

 his own account of his pupil in a subsequent chapter: 



"My father did not trust our education solely to our High School lessons. 

 We had a tutor at home, a young man of an excellent disposition, and a 

 laborious student. He was bred to the Kirk, but unfortunately took such a 

 very strong turn to fanaticism, that he afterwards resigned an excellent living 

 in a seaport town, merely because he could not persuade the mariners of the 

 guilt of setting sail of a Sabbath, in which, by the bye, he was less likely to 

 be successful, as, ceeteris paribus, sailors, from an opinion that it is a fortunate 

 omen, always choose to weigh anchor on that day. The calibre of this young 

 man's understanding may be judged of by this anecdote ; but in other respects, 

 he was a faithful and active instructor ; and from him chiefly I learned writ- 

 ing and arithmetic. I repeated to him my French lessons, and studied with 

 him my themes in the classics, but not classically. I also acquired, by dis- 

 puting with him, for this he readily permitted, some knowledge of school- 

 divinity and church-history, and a great acquaintance in particular with the 

 old books describing the early history of the church of Scotland, the wars and 

 sufferings of the covenanters, and so forth, I, with a head on fire for chivalry, 

 was a cavalier ; my friend was a roundhead ; I was a Tory and he was a 

 Whig. I hated presbyterians, and admired Montrose with his victorious 

 Highlanders; he liked the presbyterian Ulysses, the dark and politic Argyle; 

 so that we never wanted subjects of dispute, but our disputes were always 

 amicable. In all these tenets there was no real conviction on my part, arising 

 out of acquaintance with the views or principles of either party ; nor had my 

 antagonist address enough to turn the debate on such topics. I took up my 

 politics at that period as king Charles II. did his religion, from an idea that 

 the cavalier creed was the more gentlemanlike persuasion of the two." VoL 

 i. p. 2931. 



Turning- from the evidence thus furnished from his own lips of his 

 very early prejudices in favour of rig-id Toryism, and passing- over his 

 classical training-, (forthe formalities of which he had no great relish,) 

 we shall venture to cite once more his own memoir, to show how his 

 mind was gradually forming a taste for those studies, on which he 

 afterwards built his reputation. 



"In the meanwhile my acquaintance with English literature was gradually 

 extending itself. In the intervals of my school hours I had always perused with 

 avidity such books of history, or poetry, or voyages and travels, as chance pre- 

 sented to me not forgetting the usual, or rather ten times the usual, quantity 

 of fairy tales, eastern stories, romances, &c. These studied were totally unre- 

 gulated and undirected. My tutor thought it almost a sin to open a profane 

 play or poem ; and my mother, besides that she might be in some degree 

 trammelled by the religious scruples which he suggested, had no longer the 

 opportunity to hear me read poetry as formerly. I found, however, in her 

 dressing-room (where I slept at one time) some odd volumes of Shakspeare, 

 nor can I easily forget the rapture with which I sate up in my shirt reading 

 them by the light of a fire in her apartment, until the bustle of the family 

 rising from supper warned me it was time to creep back to my bed, where I 

 was supposed to have been safely deposited since nine o'clock. Chance, how- 

 ever, threw in my way a poetical preceptor. This was no other than the 

 excellent and benevolent Dr. Blacklock, well known at that time as a literary 

 character. I know not how I attracted his attention, and that of some of the 

 "young men who boarded in his family ; but so it was that I became a fre- 

 quent and favoured guest. The kind old man opened to me the stores of his 



